17 March 1856 – 23 March 1856

Monday. Snow going off very gradually under the sun alone. Going begins to be bad; horses slump; hard turning out. See where the cattle, which have stepped a few inches one side the sled-track, have slumped two feet or more, leaving great holes.

P. M. — Up river. It is still quite tight at Hubbard’s Bath Bend and at Clamshell, though I hesitate a little to cross at these places. ‘There are dark spots in the soft, white ice, which will be soon worn through. What a solid winter we have had! No thaw of any consequence; no bare ground since December 25th; but an unmelting mass of snow and ice, hostile to all greenness. Have not seen a green radical leaf even, as usual, all being covered up. Nut Meadow Brook is open for a dozen rods from its mouth, and for a rod into the river. Higher up, it is still concealed by a snowy bridge two feet thick. I see the ripples made by some fishes, which were in the small opening at its mouth, making haste to hide themselves in the ice-covered river. This square rod and one or two others like it in the town are the only places where I could see this phenomenon now. ‘Thus early they appear, ready to be the prey of the fish hawk. Within the brook I see quite a school of little minnows, an inch long, amid or over the bare dead stems of polygonums, and one or [two] little water-bugs (apple- seeds). The last also in the broad ditch on the Cor- ner road, in Wheeler’s meadow. Notwithstanding the backwardness of the season, all the town still under deep snow and ice, here they are, in the first open and smooth water, governed by the altitude of the sun. I see many small furrows, freshly made, in. the sand at the bottom of the brook, from half an inch to three quarters wide, which I suspect are made by some small shellfish already moving, perhaps Paludina /'

P. M. — To Walden. Measured the snow again. West of railroad, 15; east of railroad, 114; average, 132; Trillium Woods, 163. The last measurement was on the 7th, when it averaged about sixteen inches in the open land. This depth it must have preserved, owing to the remarkably cold weather, till the 13th at least. So it chances that the snow was constantly sixteen inches deep, at least, on a level in open land, from January 13th to March 13th. It is remarkable how rapidly it has settled on the east of the railroad as compared with the west since the 7th (or I may say rather the 13th). The whole average settling, in open land, since say the 13th, is a little less than three inches. The thickness of the ice on Walden in the long cove on the south side, about five rods from shore, where the water is nineteen and a half feet deep, is just twenty- six inches, about one foot being snow ice. In the middle it was twenty-four and a quarter on the 11th. It is the same there now, and undoubtedly it was then twenty- six In the long cove. Probably got to be the thickest on this side. Since the warmer weather which began on the 13th, the snow, which was three or four inches deep, is about half melted on the ice, under the influence of the sun alone, and the ice is considerably softened within the last five days, thus suddenly, quite through, it being easier to cut and more moist, quite fine and white like snow in the hole, sticking together as damp snow when I shovel it out on my axe, the dust not at all hard, dry, and crystalline. Apparently, then, Wal- den is as thickly frozen about shore as Flint’s. While I am measuring, though it is quite warm, the air is filled with large, moist snowflakes, of the star form, which are rapidly concealing the very few bare spots on the railroad embankment. It is, indeed, a new snow-storm. Another old red maple bleeds now, on the warm south edge of Trillium Wood. The first maple was old and in a warm position.

It snowed three or four inches of damp snow last afternoon and night, now thickly adhering to the twigs and branches. Probably it will soon melt and help carry off the snow. P. M.— To Trillium Wood and to Nut Meadow Brook to tap a maple, see paludina, and get elder and sumach spouts, slumping in the deep snow. It is now so softened that I slump at every third step. The sap of red maples in low and warm positions now gen- erally flows, but not in high and exposed ones. Where I saw those furrows in the sand in Nut Meadow Brook the other day, I now explore, and find within a square foot or two half a dozen of Paludina decisa with their feet out, within an inch of the surface, so I have scarcely a doubt that they made them. I suppose that they do not furrow the bottom thus under the ice, but as soon as the spring sun has thawed it, they come to the surface, — perhaps at night only, — where there is some little sand, and furrow it thus by their motions. Maybe it is the love season. Perhaps these make part of the food of the crows which visit this brook and whose tracks I now see on the edge, and have all winter. Probably they also pick up some dead frogs. Father read in a paper to-day of seven hundred and forty-odd apple tree buds recently taken out of the crop of a partridge. Last night’s snow, which is melting very fast, is evi- dently helping to rot the ice very fast, in the absence of rain, by settling into it, as did the older snow, in- deed. Maybe it will thaw the ground in the same way. Considering how solid and thick the river was a week ago, I am surprised to find how cautious I have grown about crossing it in many places now. For two or three days I have heard the gobbling of turkeys, the first spring sound, after the chickadees and hens, that I think of. The river has just begun to open at Hubbard’s Bend. It has been closed there since January 7th, 2. e. ten weeks and a half. Set a pail before coming here to catch red maple sap, at Trillium Wood. I am now looking after elder and sumach for spouts. I find the latter best, for though the former has as large a pith (larger in proportion to its size), its wood commonly being less, it does not fill so large a hole, nor is it so strong. Yet there is some by A. Barrett’s ditch more than two inches in diameter, very strong, but its pith small. The pith, etc., of the smooth smells to me like weak tobacco. What other shrubs have a large pith?? Got my smooth sumach on the south side of Nawshawtuct. I know of no shrubs hereabout except elders and the sumachs which have a suitable pith and wood for such a pur- pose. The pith of the smooth sumach is a light brown, like yellow snuff. The ring of old wood next to it is a decayed-looking greenish yellow; the sap-wood is white. When cut or broken, it has a singularly parti- colored and decayed look, there being often but a small proportion of sap-wood. A white sticky juice oozes out of the edge of the bark where cut, and soon turns yellow and hard in drops like pitch or hickory sap. This pith does not come out quite so entire and smooth as elder, being drier now at least. You can shove it past the axils of twigs. The old wood of the ivy is also yellow like this, but there is more and harder sap-wood and the pith is quite small. The pith of the poison sumach or dogwood is considerably smaller, but I think it has the same scent with the smooth. An- other poison-dogwood has a very large pith, and I am not sure about the scent. The juice of the bark is not white.

George Brooks, of the North Quarter, tells me that he went a-fishing at Nagog Pond on the 18th and found the ice from thirty to thirty-seven inches thick (the greater part, or all but about a foot, snow ice), the snow having blown on to the ice there. He measured it with a rule and a hooked stick. (But at Walden, where I measured, there was no drifting of the snow.) It may have been no thicker at Nagog on an average. He says that both the gray squirrel and the red eat pine seed, but not in company. The former have been quite common about his house the past winter, and his neighbor caught two in his yard. 10 a. M.— To my red maple sugar camp. Found that, after a pint and a half had run from a single tube after 3 p. M. yesterday, it had frozen about half an inch thick, and this morning a quarter of a pint more had run. Between 10.30 and 11.30 a. m. this forenoon, I caught two and three quarters pints more, from six tubes, at the same tree, though it is completely over- cast and threatening rain. Four and one half pints in all. This sap is an agreeable drink, like iced water (by chance), with a pleasant but slight sweetish taste. I boiled it down in the afternoon, and it made an ounce and a half of sugar, without any molasses, which appears to be the average amount yielded by the sugar maple in similar situations, viz. south edge of a wood, a tree partly decayed, two feet [in] diameter. It is worth the while to know that there is all this sugar in our woods, much of which might be obtained by using the refuse wood lying about, without damage to the proprietors, who use neither the sugar nor the wood. I left home at ten and got back before twelve with two and three quarters pints of sap, in addition to the one and three quarters I found collected. I put in saleratus and a little milk while boiling, the former to neutralize the acid, and the latter to col- lect the impurities in a skum. After boiling it till I burned it a little, and my small quantity would not flow when cool, but was as hard as half-done candy, I put it on again, and in a minute it was softened and turned to sugar. While collecting sap, the little of yesterday’s lodging snow that was left, dropping from the high pines in Trillium Wood and striking the brittle twigs in its de- scent, makes me think that the squirrels are running there. I noticed that my fingers were purpled, evidently from the sap on my auger. Had a dispute with Father about the use of my mak- ing this sugar when I knew it could be done and might have bought sugar cheaper at Holden’s. He said it took me from my studies. I said I made it my study; I felt as if I had been to a university. It dropped from each tube about as fast as my pulse beat, and, as there were three tubes directed to each vessel, it flowed at the rate of about one hundred and eighty drops in a minute into it. One maple, standing immediately north of a thick white pine, scarcely flowed at all, while a smaller, farther in the wood, ran pretty well. The south side of a tree bleeds first in spring. I hung my pails on the tubes or a nail. Had two tin pails and a pitcher. Had a three-quarters-inch auger. Made a dozen spouts, five or six inches long, hole as large as a pencil, smoothed with a pencil.

Saturday. P. M.—To white maples and up Assabet. The ice of the river is very rapidly softening, still concealed by snow, the upper part becoming homo- geneous with the melting snow above it. I sometimes slump into snow and ve six or eight inches, to the harder ice beneath. I walk up the middle of the Assabet, and most of the way on middle of South Branch. Many tracks of crows in snow along the edge of the open water against Merrick’s at Island. They thus visit the edge of water —this and brooks — before any ground is exposed. Is it for small shellfish? The snow now no longer bears you. It has become very coarse-grained under the sun, and [I hear it sink around me as I walk. Part of the white maples now begin to flow, some perhaps two or three days. Probably in equally warm positions they would have begun to flow as early as those red ones which I have tapped. Their buds, and apparently some of the red ones, are visibly swollen. This probably follows directly on the flowing of the sap. In three instances I cut off a twig, and sap flowed and dropped from the part attached to the tree, but in no case would any sap flow from the part cut off (I mean where I first had cut it), which appears to show that the sap is now running up.’ I also cut a notch in a branch two inches in diameter, and the upper side of the cut remained dry, while sap flowed from the lower side, but in another instance both sides were wet at once and equally. The sap, then, is now generally flowing upward in red and white maples in warm positions. See it flowing from maple twigs which were gnawed off by rabbits in the winter. The down of willow catkins in very warm places has in almost every case peeped out an eighth of an inch, generally over the whole willow. On water standing above the ice under a white maple, are many of those Perla (?) insects, with four wings, drowned, though it is all ice and snow around the coun- try over. Do not see any flying, nor before this. The woodchoppers, who , re cutting the wood at Assabet Spring, now at last go to their work up the middle of the river, but one got in yesterday, one leg the whole length. It is rotted through in many places behind Prichard’s. At the red maple which I first tapped, I see the sap still running and wetting the whole side of the tree. It has also oozed out from the twigs, especially those that are a little drooping, and run down a foot or two bathing them sometimes all around, both twigs and buds sometimes, or collected in drops on the under sides of the twigs and all evaporated to molasses, which is, for the most part, as black as blacking or ink, having probably caught the dust, etc., even over all this snew. Yet it is as sweet and thick as molasses, and the twigs and buds look as if blacked and polished. Black drops of this thick, sweet syrup spot the under sides of the twigs. No doubt the bees and other insects frequent the maples now. I thought I heard the hum of a bee, but perhaps it was a railroad whistle on the Lowell Railroad. It is as thick as molasses. See a fuzzy gnat on it. It is especially apt to collect about the bases of the twigs, where the stream is delayed. Where the sap is flowing, the red maple being cut, the inner bark turns crimson. I see many snow-fleas on the moist maple chips. Saw a pigeon woodpecker under the swamp white oak in Merrick’s pasture, where there is a small patch of bare ground. Probably Minott saw one in his door- yard in midwinter.